Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 - March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born American writer and child psychologist. He is widely known for his studies of autism. His "refrigerator mother" theory of autism, now largely disfavored, enjoyed considerable currency and influence while Bettelheim was alive.

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Upon his father's death, Bettelheim was forced to leave university in order to care for his family lumber business. After ten years, he returned to his education, earning a degree in philosophy and authoring a dissertation on the history of art.

Although interested in psychology for much of his life, he never studied it formally.

Bettelheim traveled across Nazi state hospitals in Germany, during the infamous T-4 euthanasia program of the 1930s, the start of his research in mental patients. Bettelheim resumed his studies to become an accredited psychiatrist when he returned to Austria under the intense anti-Semitism of Nazi-era Germany.

By birth an Austrian Jew, Bettelheim was interned at Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps from 1938 to 1939. Records of his internment shown Bettelheim was hired as the camp doctor to overview camp prisoners' mental health. His release from internment was purchased, as remained possible prior to the commencement of hostilities in World War II.

He arrived in Australia in 1939 and later to the United States in 1943, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1944. Bettelheim eventually became a professor of psychology, teaching at the University of Chicago from 1944 until his retirement in 1973. He was trained in philosophy (Ph.D. in Aesthetics) and was analyzed by the Viennese psychoanalyst Richard Sterba.

The most significant part of Bettelheim's professional life was spent serving as director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago, a home for emotionally disturbed children. He wrote books on both normal and abnormal child psychology and was respected by many during his lifetime. His book The Uses of Enchantment recast fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology. It was awarded the U.S. Critic's Choice Prize for criticism in 1976 & the National Book Award in the category of Contemporary Thought in 1977.

Bettelheim's career can be viewed as a classic example of the dangers of pseudoscientific methodology. Bettelheim's most significant theory claimed that unemotional and cold mothering was the cause of childhood autism. This theory, now repudiated, caused severe damage to thousands of families who believed his untested claims.

Bettelheim was convinced that autism had no organic basis but that it instead was mainly influenced by the upbringing of mothers who did not want their children to live, either consciously or unconsciously, which in turn caused them to restrain contact with them and fail to establish an emotional connection. Absent fathers were also blamed. A complex and detailed explanation in psychoanalytical and psychological terms, derived from the qualitative investigation of clinical cases can be found in one of his most famous books, The Empty Fortress.

Other Freudian analysts, as well as scientists and medics, followed Bettelheim's lead. They often confused and over-simplified. This led to some blaming the mother for the child's autism, a theory which Bettelheim was against. This is not understood by many of his detractors, who criticise a facile version of his work.

Beyond Bettelheim's psychological theories, controversy has existed regarding his history and personality. After Bettelheim's suicide in 1990, his detractors claimed that Bettelheim had a dark side. He was known for exploding in screaming anger at students. Three ex-patients questioned his work, characterizing him as a cruel tyrant. Critics also claim that he spanked his patients despite publicly rejecting spanking as "brutal". Treatments based on his autism theories to help children, some reporting rates of cure around 85%, were questioned.

Raines, Theron: Rising to the Light: A Portrait of Bruno Bettelheim, Knopf, New York, 2002.

Sutton, Nina: Bruno Bettelheim: The Other Side of Madness, Duckworth Press, London, 1995. (Translated from the French by David Sharp in collaboration with the author. Subsequently published with the title Bruno Bettelheim, a Life and a Legacy.)

Zipes, Jack: "On the Use and Abuse of Folk and Fairy Tales with Children: Bruno Bettelheim's Moralistic Magic Wand", in Zipes, Jack: Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1979.

-Author unknown-: "Accusations of Abuse Haunt the Legacy of Dr. Bruno Bettelheim", New York Times, 4 November 1990: "The Week in Review" section.